Bible Reading Project – Part 3

Posted On April 12, 2012

Joshua, Judges and Ruth

By Adrian Peetoom

Here is how the New Jerusalem Bible introduces this next section (and beyond).

“The books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings form one great history, telling the story of Israel from the settlement in Palestine until the Babylonian exile. The materials on which the author [or redactors] draws vary enormously, from folk-tales, through cycles of stories about Elijah and Elisha, to court records of kings. But the final editor is concerned above all with one viewpoint: fidelity to Yahweh brings prosperity, while desertion of him brings punishment.”

In this section we’ll tackle the first section of this cycle, namely the three pre-Samuel-Kings books: Joshua, Judges and Ruth. The first two are full of violence, but the third is a wonderful pastoral story.  Joshua is a book of conquests, and not every battle is a success. Judges, the early roughly 500 years of living in the Promised Land, describes the almost barbaric life in Israel, with the author telling us at the end “there was no king in Israel,” and “everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” So much for being “careful to keep the whole Law which my servant Moses laid down for you (Joshua 1:7)”.  Oy Vey! (Do we do any better today, though without as widespread tribal violence?) But all this violence is followed by Ruth, a story of peace and blessing. As if Yahweh told the redactors: for pity’s sake, give them some good news!

And one more reminder. I make no pretense that what I offer is any more than my impressions formed after a lifetime of reading these stories. My reading of these has been shaped by teachers and parents telling them to me, by my own readings of them, by reflective books some learned some popular, by Bible study sessions and by sermons.  Some sermons corrected the impressions I had already formed, by showing me how careful exegesis (“what does the text actually say?”) revealed meanings I hadn’t thought of. Invariably these had to do with greater insight in the grace of God operating in human life. So I offer my notes not as final words but as a personal familiarity that may be corrected.

So let’s walk through Joshua first.

We’ll concentrate on the first 12 chapters (the conquest).

We’ll skip chapters 13-21.

We’ll pay some attention to chapters 22-24.

Chapters 1-12, the conquest

Joshua the successor of Moses

The early part is all about the investiture of Joshua as the successor of Moses. Someone has to lead the people, and Joshua was a natural. You have met him before (Exodus 33:11, Numbers chapters 13 and 14). Being one of the twelve whom Moses had assigned the job of scouting Canaan, he was one of only two who had been optimistic and full of faith. Yahweh chooses him, but with the instruction “To have the book of the Law always on your lips.” And notice how much land Yahweh promises. Not just the small strip west of the Jordan, but way east of it, well into what is now Syria, Jordan and Iraq. (These promises now form the basis of the claims of current ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel with regards to their ultimate borders, resulting, for starters, in the building of settlements in West Bank areas.)

In addition to appointing Joshua, Yahweh also arranges a similar spectacular water crossing, namely the Jordan. And not just the Jordan, but the Jordan at its highest, with water overflowing its banks. See, as Moses so Joshua. (Also saying that as the Nile was Egypt’s fertility lifeline, so the Jordan would be Israel’s?) No wonder Joshua erected two stone memorials, one in the Jordan itself and one close to Gilgal. And with this purposes:  Get the kids in every generation to ask, “Why those stones?” (In my earlier Reformed tradition this text would be one of the ones cited as grounds for establishing Christian schools where that question could be answered freely.)

(In passing this joke I have heard a number of times. Who are the three men who had no earthly father? Answer: Adam, Jesus, and Joshua, the son of Nun!)

Jericho

The first and most spectacular conquest. But the story is spectacular not because of its military success, but precisely because it is not grounded in a clever siege and a brilliant military campaign. Once again: the compilers of the Old Testament wanted Yahweh as centre of the Exodus, not Israel’s might or their powerful leaders. Moreover, they wanted to remind their readers that as Moses, so Joshua, leaders and generals yes, but only because of Yahweh’s guidance.

There is the preparation, the story of Rahab, the prostitute. Actually, it boggles the mind. Two (nameless!) guys on a sacred mission, and the first thing they do is shack up with a Jericho prostitute. And why should Rahab turn against her own city? Was it because as prostitute she would have been despised by Jericho people? Did she sense a way out of her current life? The Bible doesn’t let us in on those details. But she saves the two men.

Chapter 5:13-15 contains another important bit, one easily overlooked. It gives us Joshua on the eve of the conquest, on his own, perhaps in early evening overlooking the city from a hill and brooding how to go about conquering this strategic city deemed mighty and impregnable, the gateway to the land west of the Jordan. Joshua sees a man with a drawn sword, and confronts him. Friend or enemy? And the answer is most surprising: neither! Surely that can’t be true, especially after the “man” identifies himself as a captain in the army of Yahweh? Would he not be on Joshua’s side?  Also once more reminder that Joshua is the Yahweh appointed leader after Moses, for the “stand on holy ground” reminds us of the story of the burning bush.

I’ve long held the following view. Joshua has to realize that this battle is not just between his warriors and the city’s defenders. There’s holy stuff going on here, the Lord’s doing. A message to Joshua: whatever will be happening in this time of conquest, Israel is but an instrument in the hands of Yahweh. When I read this little bit, I’m always mindful of the original promise to Abraham, namely that Abraham’s descendants, being recipients of blessings, were called to be a blessing to all nations. These stories are not about Israel first of all; they are about God in relationship through Israel with the whole human race, the peoples well beyond these future borders. A relationship which also includes Rahab the prostitute, not a descendant of Abraham in the flesh, a woman to boot!

That may be a reasonable view (I hope it is), but I now think there’s an additional dynamic here. Regularly the Bible (Old and New Testament) surprise us with bits that don’t fit our schemas. New Testament parables are among those. They defy definitive explanations, even though every generation tries to come up with them. I think this Joshua bit is one of those windows on mystery (Abraham’s “sacrifice” of Isaac is another, Moses and the burning bush is one more). These bits remind us that genuine holiness is also mystery. God is both present with us, and also absent in transcendence.  God is hidden, except for those who seek him. Here Joshua had the immediate future figured out, and lo, he gets reminded that that future is not his to command. That would also explain that Jericho falls not by the sword (even though its gets extinguished by the sword). “Holy ground” is the term for “unfathomable mystery.”

The strategic importance of Jericho, both to the Canaanites and Israel, is emphasized in 6:26-27. A reference also to the still prevailing children’s sacrifice as part of pagan religious life in those days, at least among some peoples. (A later Israelite did rebuilt Jericho, and lost his two sons doing so.) However, this passage about not building Jericho seems to have left a bit of mystery in the Grand Narrative, for it seems that it continued to play a role in the politics of the region, sometimes under the name “City of Palms.” Watch for the references.

Ai

And the next city conquest is a disaster, mitigated only in the end. One’s man’s disobedience, but it comes after expressions of arrogance after Jericho  – they forgot they didn’t have to fight for that far bigger and more important city. “Spare the whole people such an effort; there are only a few of them (7:3).” There is so much irony in the Bible. There’s irony in the fact that important Jericho requires just about the same amount of Joshua text as small and insignificant Ai. The big city is conquered for them, while the small one takes a lot of Jewish blood, confusion and suffering. See: the emphasis is on Yahweh.

Gibeon

So much of the Old Testament has to do with the choice of Israel as God’s special people in those early days, but with plenty of caveats about absolute exclusivity. Israel at its best needed to be a blessing to all nations. This Gibeon story I read as a reminder. Sure, the Gibeonites (pagans, remember) played the Israelites for suckers with their “we’ve come from afar” pretense. But once incorporated by treaty, Yahweh accepted them as Israelites, and rescued them as He would rescue Israel, sometimes with the sun standing still in the sky and hail and thunder scaring the pants of enemies.

The rest of the conquest

In chapters 10 and 11.

Skip chapters 12-22 

Joshua’s last days, chapters 23

Just as Moses ended his life with speeches, so does Joshua.  Not all of the Promised Land is already in the hands of Israel, but (says Joshua) if you keep the commandments, you will succeed in obtaining the rest. And then (in chapter 24) we get a familiar story, one that will be repeated in various forms in both Old and New Testament, including in some of the psalms, namely a recitation of history. You ask: who is God? The answer: It is the God who did the following… And notice the specific reference to Balak and Balaam, as well as to Achan, the thief of Jericho!

The Church keeps producing books about the nature of God, borrowing words and concepts from philosophical and metaphysical vocabularies. For instance, one of the creeds I grew up with (The Belgic Confession) begins with:  “We believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that there is a single and simple spiritual being, whom we call God – eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, unchangeable, infinite, almighty; completely wise, just and good, and the overflowing source of all good.”

Those are fine words, but all those words do not naturally flow out of the Bible itself. When Bible figures get asked, “Who is the God you worship?” they tell stories.  As in, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the god of Moses and the Exodus; the God of the Torah; the God of David; etc. There is a lesson in that. All through human history the Church has had times in which it bowed down to its own formulations of God and reality (sinning against the second commandment, namely idolatry). It even resorted to violence sometimes in advancing and defending human definitions and descriptions of the indefinable and transcendent (crusades, Inquisition, religious wars of the 19^th century, witchcraft trials, schism after schism within the Body of Christ). Yet when the Bible gets serious about God and our relationship with God, we get stories, not definitions and subtle abstract expositions. This realization has led to the development of what experts call “Narrative Theology,” a most interesting focus of God at work in all of history.

I’ll share with you some of the parts that have stuck in my mind since my childhood.

1. “And now I have given you a country for which you have not toiled, towns you have not built, although you live in them, vineyards and olive groves you have not planted, although you eat their fruit.”  (24:13) But isn’t that the case for all of us? We are all born in some place in the world ready to receive us but built by others, who were born there not having crafted it either, to others born there also in receipt of its blessings. “So now,” as Joshua said so long ago, “fear Yahweh and serve him truly and sincerely… “(in grateful response I would add).
2. “As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord.” (24:15, though it is worded differently in the New Jerusalem Bible.) But as quoted here I have seen it written in plaques outside front doors of homes, and in art work inside. I have heard it quoted all through my life, and asserted it myself at times.
3. Joshua died when he was 110, having lived ten years less than his predecessor.  Funny: as a child I heard the conquering Joshua stories many times, but he never became the towering figure Moses was (and is) in my mind. Was that meant to be so, as illustrated by the fact that Moses became 120, and Joshua (only!) 110? Joshua was also buried in a known place, unlike Moses who grave was never to be found.
4. And Joseph does get buried in the Promised Land, as he had asked. (See Genesis 50:22-26). An interesting example of how narrative works, with all kinds of connecting threads popping up at times

Judges

On the face of it, violence rules this book. At least 10,000 warriors die before the end of the first chapter. The rest of the book is full of oppression, battles, and violence against women. Not a pretty picture.

But here are some more hopeful patterns, as I see them.

1. The first of these has to do with the book’s title. Are the “Judges” judges? Not really, as you shall see. The only person described as sitting down to judge and provide civil justice is a woman!, Deborah (4:4-5). The other figures seem more like temporary guerilla war and army leaders. But hovering over all of them is the figure of Yahweh, the ultimate judge. I sometimes think: maybe the book’s title is not a noun but a verb with the subject implied, as in “(Yahweh) Judges.” [1]For it is clear that shalom will not come from the human characters highlighted in this book – every one is flawed, some more, some less (with perhaps one notable shining light exception, namely Deborah).
2. That Judges is a collection of oral tradition stories seems clear from the opening two chapters, two different introductions to these stories (cf. 1:1-ff and 2:6-10), perhaps told and retold among the Israelites from one generation to the next. There is a sense of timeline here, with years of oppression and then deliverance in sequence adding up to roughly 480 years.  Not that we need to take that overly seriously, as “40” is a characteristic Bible cipher to indicate one generation. As in “40 years in the desert,” meaning one generation, so see e.g. 3:11 and 3:30 as illustrations.
3. Notice the pattern throughout the book:
   1. Israel doesn’t do what it had been instructed to do: live a holy life.
   2. Oppressors subdue them.
   3. Israel cries out (or groans, e.g. 2:18).
   4. A “judge” arises.
   5. Israel is liberated.
   6. Israel forgets its history (and the cycle repeats).
   7. While this seems a male book (and isn’t the Old Testament especially a male book?), sprinkled through the stories are interesting female figures. In Judges , the characters of Achsah (1:13-15), Deborah, Jael (chapters 4-5), and Jephthah’s daughter (11:29ff) seem worth focusing on.

Achsah. A wonderful glimpse of shalom, life as it ought to be lived, and early in the book. Ignore the morality of bartering your daughter for a conquest, and bypass the fact that the conqueror is marrying his niece. Focus on Achsah instead- no wallflower she. For what’s going on in these few verses? Given the pattern of females having no power, when she joins her husband (or is she returning to her Dad’s household while her husband is fighting battles?) she is displeased, for while she has been given a piece of land (as dowry?), it a mere hunk of desert. For the life she is planning to lead (growing life-giving crops instead of going out to war all the time), she needs water. And so Dad gives her not one but two springs! (Achsah reminds him that war-rying should be worry-ing to him, and he is a bit ashamed?) Good for you feisty daughter and wife!

Ehud (chapter 3). Some of these stories are both serious and humourous. This is one of those ( and Gideon another). Imagine slaying your enemy as he is having a bowel movement. And how? By being “sinister.” “Sinister” is Greek for left-handed. Why do we shake (right) hands when we meet strangers and friends? The habit has its origins in olden times when you thus showed that your main hand carried no sword or knife. So left-handed folks could fool enemies by showing an empty right hand while holding a weapon at the ready in the left. No wonder “sinister” came to mean what it means to us now.

Deborah (Barak), chapters 4-5.

Ah, this is such a satisfying story for children. A brave and clever woman. A general (Barak) who listens to her advice and needs her backing. A powerful enemy (Sisera) with lots of “tanks” (chariots) whose army soon crumbles. And then that humiliating death at the hand of another brave and clever woman, Jael. Notice in passing that Jael wasn’t even Jewish! Notice also that Barak actually didn’t do much more than organize his army. See? Yahweh is the central character in Judges, not any of the judges.

This story, too, is not without humour, perhaps a bit of the black variety. It’s worth reading all of chapter 5 aloud, the song of Deborah and Barak. It’s a poem about those who have faith, and those who don’t. And then there is the bit about Sisera’s mother.  A sort of Greek Homer poem touch!

Jephtha and his daughter

Another weird story.  Jephtha is the son of a prostitute (11:1). But about prostitutes, keep this in mind. In spite of repeated Torah’s reminders to care for “widows and orphans,” women and children left on their own after husbands /fathers died or abandoned them (divorce was easy for men) suffered greatly. Often women had no other recourse than to become prostitutes. But the other facet of this information bit is this: Yahweh chooses who he wants as his servants, (see also 11:29). Which does not always prevent those chosen vessels from having their stupid moments, especially when they convince themselves that successes were the outflow of their merits (courage, wisdom). I read his vow (11:30) not as a moment of modesty but as one of pride of possible achievement. And pity his daughter.

By the way, the whole notion of virginity in the Old Testament, but especially here, denotes ownership of maidens by men, be they fathers or husbands. (My rejection of that notion made me decide not to “give away” any of my five daughters when they got married. I had seen it done a number of times, and while I don’t for a moment think that all such Dads were convinced they owned their daughters, for me it remained a wrong move. Some our daughters walked down the aisle with their husbands to be. Some Johanna and I escorted together.)

Here are some other story highlights, at least for me.

Gideon (chapters 6-8).

We need to reflect on idols a bit. So much of Israel’s history, from settling the land until the Exile, has to do with Israelites worshiping idols, notably Baal and Astarte, the master god and the goddess of fertility.  It’s easy to narrow thinking about that to the wrong kind of worship, to the first and second commandment: “no other gods” and “no idols,” that is no worship of anything human even if it is meant to represent God.  But that doesn’t do justice to what is actually being described in these stories. For the kind of God one worships has a powerful impact on all of human life. About who is “enemy” and who is “friend,” about how to gain resources and spend/share them, about the meaning of ownership and the use of language, in short about what the other commandments have to say about human life.  So that, whenever prophets call Israel to repentance and doing away with idols, they are actually calling them to begin leading holy lives again. This especially in view of the recurring motif that, yes, Yahweh has called Israel to himself a s a special nation, but yes also, only for Israel to be a blessing to all nations. How can it be a blessing? By living a holy life.

All this gets illustrated (though sometimes between the lines) in the story of Gideon.  “The Israelites did what was evil in Yahweh’s eyes” (6:1) and life disintegrates. Things are so bad that Gideon has to thresh wheat in his winepress, that is, in a hole in the ground deep enough so he can’t be spotted (6:11). And Yahweh has to go through extraordinary lengths to make Gideon have any faith at all, and to get him to do away with the Baal altar and sacred pole (25).  Even then Gideon’s faith teeters on the edge of extinction (the story of the fleece).

That Yahweh, and not one of his judges or prophets, is the centre of attention, gets illustrated once more in the story of Gideon’s army, which is miraculously reduced to only 300. The thing is, as soon as Gideon acts on his own, he becomes a sort of despot, and in spite of some pious words (“Yahweh shall rule you” – 8:23) also a religious leader who misleads his people. And a sort of pseudo king, with many wives and 70 sons, presumed evidence of his achievements.

I always read this whole story with mixed feelings. Rejoicing when I read about the 300 and their ruse to defeat the Midianites, heralding new life for Israel. Saddened when I see Gideon descend from the heights. (But the whole story so representative of human history, the history of God’s people, and even my own individual existence.)

Abimelech

A weird story with an interesting poem/fable!

Samson

Of course Hollywood would make a movie of this story. It’s juicy, what with his marriages, his long hair, his daring feats, and above all his dalliance with Delilah. And what a climax!

So how can it be a sacred story? Here are my ideas, and I read the shape of this story as a piece of interpretive theology, as a long-after reflection on the events.

First of all, Yahweh takes a direct hand (appointing his angel) to announce the birth to a barren woman, and Yahweh is patient and determined enough to do it twice. (Were Yahweh’s  doings so unfamiliar to this couple?) By the way, his birth is one in a line of special Bible births, leading up to the birth of Jesus: Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Samson, Samuel, Isaiah’s young woman (not “virgin!”), Jesus.

It is Yahweh “who was seeking grounds for a quarrel with the Philistines” (14:4).

It is the “Spirit of Yahweh” which seizes him at crucial moments (14:19; 15:14; 16:28). But that spirit also deserts him at a crucial point (16:20).

Chapters 17-21

Two wild stories, both of them infused with their purpose, namely to tell us that “in those days there was no king in Israel, and everyone did as he saw fit” (17:6, 19:1; and the very last verse of this book (21:25). As if these stories were included only to lay the foundation for what will follow, namely the establishment of the Promised Land as a kingdom.

Summary

“Judges” is set in a different time, in a different culture. It portrays the Israelites as living lives just like their neighbours, life filled with raids, thefts, violence (against women especially), injustice, oppression, confusion, tribal revenges. Those in themselves would not have horrified the Israelites, though they horrify us. (Humanity has made some progress!)

But when critics charge Christians with taking these stories as permission to oppress others (Crusaders, inquisition, the conquest of Mexico and the Incas, the violence that in the 19^th century sometimes accompanied Christian missions), we can reject that conclusion. Not that Christians didn’t do these awful things. But there is a way of reading even this violent book sacramentally. It takes watching for the way Yahweh figures in it, and for Yahweh’s Torah remaining available.

• Yahweh lets them be until they cry out.
• He calls forth deliverers, flawed though these be.
• He lets his People slide away from the path of life if they so wish, until they cry again.
• At the end of Judges Yahweh lets them dream that a king will be the answer to their problems. At this point we must recall that the redactors already knew that kings would not be an ultimate answer, except for the possibility that in some kings the contours of life lived according to the Torah might point to an answer. Here the figure of King David will become important.  We’ll come back to this motif when we look at the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles.

Ruth

This is a wonderful story. One commentator informed me that its telling was part of Israel’s harvest festivals.  Just reading it gives one a warm feeling, especially after the rather gruesome ending of Judges.

Perhaps some question will pop up.

•  Elimelech left Israel for Moab with his family to escape a famine. Where is the trust that Yahweh will provide even in times of drought?
• Why would his two sons marry Moabite women, thereby breaking “holiness” instructions?
• Why would Naomi come back to Israel?
• Why would Ruth come back with her?
• Why in the end is grandmother Naomi cited as being in the line of David, and not Ruth the mother?  (4:17).

How I enjoyed simply hearing this story read or told to me when I was a child and teenager. A glimpse of the Chosen People of God living peacefully (more or less) in the Promised Land, which is yielding its rich crops (“milk and honey”) as promised. With Yahweh mentioned as one of the characters, the one whose presence is a binding force. And I didn’t ask all those questions, legitimate though they would have been.

Maurice Samuel in “Certain People of the Book” (1955) includes this story with a wonderful retelling of his own. Not so much a retelling of the book itself but of his reactions to various parts of it. He reflects on what it may have meant then (exegesis), but also on what it may mean today (hermeneutics).

Samuel’s (the 20^th century author, not the prophet!) reactions are full of interesting details, some clearly arising out of the text, some out of his intimate knowledge of both Old Testament and Jewish life, and some out of his fertile imagination. For instance, he suggests the possibility that this story’s name should have been “Naomi, the Manager,” arguing that she knew what she was doing back in her hometown,  and subtly managed to get the outcome she wanted (Ruth marrying Boaz).  He often inks the words between the lines, For instance, he draws attention to the way Boaz, the unnamed other relative, the neighbours and the harvesters did not dealt with Ruth and Naomi properly according to the Torah, except in response to subtle Naomi prods. Plain and simple: it’s an exciting retelling/paraphrase that grips me every time I read it. It is also a wonderful example of narrative theology, namely letting a story make its point.

Summary:

These three books have advanced the Grand Narrative from the 40-year wandering in the desert to the settlement in the Promised Land. Most of it has been turbulent, with pockets of shalom (Achsah and Ruth).  We’re ready for the next phase, Israel as nation among nations.